Now they have the gall to recommend thebox.net for storage, a company I suspect is the same outfit under another name, and even if it isn’t, who would be stupid enough to trust them?
Pah. A pox on their houses.

Lesson learned, I’ll run my own storage servers from now on and trust no one online for this task.
Now, at the twelfth hour it is apparent there will be no recovery of any of my files at all.
Thanks for nothing TLU.

I hadn’t checked my account for about two months, maybe longer and when I went to the MediaMax site (formerly Streamload) I get the bad news.

Since 2004 I’ve put different data on that sight and alway had problems, but, because I’m not that serious about computers, I just thought that it was my old Windows 98 system acting up. I thought that the better system that this friend of mine had would work just fine on the MediaMax site, so I told him I’d show him how easy it was to join and set up an account… embarassing.

My friend didn’t really know what to think about it, but he’s not at all computer savvy. So I told him I would find another “reliable” data storage site. Anybody have any suggestions? Elephant Drive looked good, but Windows 98 won’t work on it. I’ll check out MediaWire too see if it’s any good.

Oh, by the way, does anybody know how I can get my data back from MediaMax (or whoever it is that has it)?

“I am sorry about the loss of your files. It appears that the migration of files to the new service has been completed but the transfer was not entirely successful with some of our customer accounts. When transferring files to the new service we encountered a high failure rate, due to the logistics involved. There’s still another big chunk of files that could be uploaded but we’re still evaluating whether it’s worth the effort to migrate them considering the high failure rate and the difficult logistics involved. With regret, I must notify you that there is very little chance that we can recover your files at this time.”

So it’s just “not worth” the effort on the part of TLU to restore their customers’ files? Funny, I thought that was what they’re there for in the first place.

Seriously, please tell anyone you know to stay away from TLU.

Everything worked fine for me when I was using Streamload. Even the early transition to MediaMax was relatively error free and I was still able to use all my data. A bit after that, I started noticing that I was having problems accessing some of my files. I thought “no big deal, they are probably having some technical issues that will be resolved soon”. Then came the infamous server crash and data loss fiasco that I don’t think they ever recovered from. Whatever happened to their servers on that day was the log that weakened the whole dam. I lost access to over half my files, each time being met by the “Oops, MediaMax encountered a hiccup!” message that I am sure we are all familiar with. I can’t even count the number of e-mails that I had to send to customer support, and if I was lucky I would receive a response; sometimes it would take 3-4 days for me to get a reply back from “Customer Support”.

I continued to use my account, unaware of any plans the company had for a second restructuring. Just about a month and a half ago, I tried to log into my MM account, only to be redirected to The Linkup’s website. In the time that had passed, I had recieved NO e-mails from the company notifying me of their change over, and that files would be deleted if users didn’t act soon. I still currently have NONE of my files that I had in my Streamload / MediaMax account transferred over, and better yet, when I e-mailed the “Customer Disservice” department, threatening to close my account and asking how I can get my data back that they stole from me, they told me this:

Hello,

Thank you for contacting TLU.

If you want to be able to get your datas back, insteed of cancelling your account we can downgrade it to free.

Thank for using TLU.

Best Regards,

Sandai

MediaMax Support
http://www.mediamax.com

—–

What the hell is that crap? She made it sound like they have my data and are holding it hostage. I have a feeling if I downgrade my account to free, i’ll get an even further runaround from them, and since I won’t be paying that will give them more leverage to further screw me over. I am just tempted to close my account permanently and forget about my data that I had. It sucks, but at least I won’t have to deal with their bullsh*t anymore…

But then they became MediaMax and the outages began. Every function seemed to have quirks and problems. They were constantly apologizing on their blog for the defects in the software. Then they suffered some sort of catastrophic data loss. Due to a developer or operator error, a huge portion of files were deleted. They again apologized on their blog and claimed they were going to retrieve everything from backups.

But then they stopped allowing comments to their blog. They stopped posting anything but minimal notes that the recovery was progressing just more slowly than wished. At that point, to find out anything you had to go elsewhere to third party blogs. And it didn’t look good.

As for me, I found that something like 95% of my files were unrecoverable. And I tried for months. During this time I would send desperate emails requesting an update on the status of my files. I got the same form emails from an autoresponder that everyone else was getting.
I kept asking for them to at least acknowledge that I would never see my lost files again, so I could make a decision about quiting. But they never responded to that request.

The one thing that kept working was their charging system. That part never failed. In fact, on two separate months, I was charged double! I was charged $19.90 instead of 9.95. After the first time, I wrote an angry email demanding a refund but never heard back from them. Instead a few months later, they did it again. I have documented this with Camtasia Studio 5. Their own account history records show clearly the double charges. But my email complaint was never even acknowledged.

I kept my account open in the vain hope that they would eventually get through the backup process and I would again be able to download my files and close down my account. I figured out how to set up a recurring credit card payment that couldn not exceed $10.00.

As for legal recourse against them, there are groups working on that. This is a petition to the better business bureau:
http://www.petitiononline.com/15pop121/petition.html

Here is a third party blog about STREAMLOAD/MEDIAMAX/THELINKUP:
http://mediamaxusers.blogspot.com/

And a new unofficial blog about THELINKUP:
http://thelinkupusers.blogspot.com/

Here is a CNET forum review with 64 comments describing the problems with STREAMLOAD, MEDIAMAX, THELINKUP.

http://forums.cnet.com/5208-6616_102-0.html?forumID=37&threadID=206285&start=15

Here is another blogpost with comments:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/07/26/streamload-upgrade-goes-very-wrong-some-users-revolt/

Here is my story: http://alchemistpoonam.wordpress.com/2008/06/03/streamloadmediamaxlinkup-cheats-and-offenders-on-web/

How can we let them get away with it? Can we not take a legal route together?

Up to you, of course. I sure won’t. This company has mistreated its customers so badly, they deserve the worst.

And let’s not just refer to them as the “company”. A company is made up of PEOPLE. People who screwed some of us royally.

Hello,

Thanks for your email. We apologize for all your files not being available at this time. Please feel free to create another account as free MediaMax accounts were not transferred over. We attempted to contact the customers by email about the move but it appears that there were some customers that did not get this email. We cannot guarantee that our engineers can find a way to recover Media Max free accounts for users that would like to upgrade but we will attempt to find a way. If you would like to be on a list of customer’s that wish to upgrade to make it possible to recover their files, please reply to this mail with your MediaMax username?

Please do not hesitate to contact us with any further queries.

Sincere regards,
Eugene Coffey
The Linkup Support
http://www.thelinkup.com
Please read and subscribe to our blog at http://tlublog.blogspot.com/ for the latest site updates

A cynical attempt to lure people into paying to get lost stored files I think. These guys are dangerous and should be avoided at all costs. The whole business of online, secure storage has been tainted by there irresponsible actions.

http://sandiego.bbb.org/WWWRoot/Report.aspx?site=26&bbb=1186&firm=20005831

I only found out about the change to TLU after several failed uploads with Mediamax XL. I finally logged in to find out what was happening and saw the message. No emails, no nothing. I downloaded all of my files immediately, since something told me this whole process would be a disaster. From what I’ve read since then, I was one of the lucky ones. People have lost files, and subsequently income, possible jobs, visitors, ad revenue, etc. I was not nearly as affected since it was just small personal storage.

I set up my own personal FTP server so I can get my files when and where I want, without needing to worry about what they are calling themselves tomorrow.

They had a good service with streamload, then they made a weird decision to go to MM, but it wasn’t as good. I was used it though, until they just shot themselves in the foot and opened TLU - in beta no less…

The help section doesn’t work (as previously mentioned here), I can’t upload or download anything, and I can’t even view my files. I’m glad everything is downloaded so even if they are deleted there’s no loss.

I second sam on recommending people choose ANYTHING other than TLU/MM. I think even ACME Online Storage Inc. would be able to do a better job than them.

That’s my two cents.

They have changed their name to THE LINKUP now. You should notify people to saty away from this compnay. They have also used STREAMLOAD as their name before.

Please let all users know about this and refer them to other comments posted on the internet about this compnay. The commnet can be simply found by googling the names that this compnay has used.